2021·Short-form and streams·skill
Wordle
The one-puzzle-a-day game whose spoiler-free emoji grid took over every timeline in the world at once.
A short vertical video
This Moment began as something you played rather than watched. Originally published on web.
- SourceNot an upload originally
- MediaNot held by ViralWorld
What this was
Six guesses at a five-letter word. Green squares for right letter, right place; yellow for right letter, wrong place. Everybody in the world gets the same word each day and there is exactly one puzzle, so there is nothing to grind and nothing to buy. Josh Wardle, a Welsh software engineer, built it for his partner and released it publicly in October 2021.
It first appeared in 2021, during short-form and streams.
The game did not go viral; the *share button* did. Wardle added a copy-to-clipboard grid of coloured squares that reproduced your guesses without revealing the answer, and it turned out that a spoiler-free brag was the thing social media had been missing. By January 2022 timelines everywhere were solid blocks of green and yellow emoji, and the world had a shared daily ritual for the first time since lockdown.
The New York Times bought it in January 2022 for a low seven-figure sum and kept it free. It was played 4.8 billion times in 2023 alone, spawned an entire genre of daily one-shot browser puzzles, and made "a Wordle for X" a recognised product pitch.
More from 2021
- The GameStop short squeeze 2021Short-form and streams
- FoodTok 2021Short-form and streams
- Noodle 2021Short-form and streams
- Wellerman 2021Short-form and streams
- Zoom Cat Lawyer 2021Short-form and streams
- Berries and Cream 2021Short-form and streams
- Bones or No Bones 2021Short-form and streams
- Bernie Sanders' mittens 2021Short-form and streams
- Devious licks 2021Short-form and streams
- Cheugy 2021Short-form and streams
Short-form and streams
- Hawk Tuah 2024Short-form and streams
- Moo Deng 2024Short-form and streams
- Sigma Boy 2024Short-form and streams
- AI slop 2024Short-form and streams
- Grimace Shake 2023Short-form and streams
- Skibidi Toilet 2023Short-form and streams
Related
- Doggface208 Dreams video 2020Short-form and streams
- Jerusalema Dance Challenge 2020Short-form and streams
- Incredible Skills Caught on Camera! 🌟 Top Satisfying Moments of Amazing Workers 2024Short-form and streams
- Incredible driving Skills | Caught on camera 2020Short-form and streams
- Dancing Pallbearers 2017The platform era
- Dab dance 2015The platform era
- Dancing Baby 1996Early web, before YouTube
- Renegade dance 2019The platform era
Grouped by explicit relationships where evidence exists, and by shared theme otherwise.
Behind the recordWhere it came from
There is no original upload to identify: this Moment did not begin as one. ViralWorld holds no copy of it either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is the record.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This Moment began as something you played rather than watched. Originally published on web.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- What happens
- Six guesses at a five-letter word. Green squares for right letter, right place; yellow for right letter, wrong place. Everybody in the world gets the same word each day and there is exactly one puzzle, so there is nothing to grind and nothing to buy. Josh Wardle, a Welsh software engineer, built it for his partner and released it publicly in October 2021.